Farewell, then, Alba, the little party that tried to take on the Scottish political establishment and learned, as others had before it, that the establishment always wins. You can join it but you can never beat it.
When Salmond went, so did Alba’s soul
Just to rub salt into the wound, the party has imploded only two months before the Scottish Parliament elections. And that was Alba’s only real purpose: to contribute to a pro-independence majority at Holyrood which, so the notion went, would then notify Westminster that Scotland was leaving.
This was the plan set out by the late Alex Salmond in which he would have played the part of Moses, Keir Starmer Pharaoh, and the Scots the Israelites: ‘Let ma people go!’ It’s almost heartbreaking that we will never get to witness the absolute scenes this would have occasioned.
Alba was, depending on your prejudices, Salmond’s one-man band or an inevitable reaction to the SNP’s failure to achieve independence. Salmond quit the party to which he gave most of his life after a Scottish government investigation accused him of sexually harassing two women. The Scottish government admitted in court that its probe had been ‘unlawful’, ‘procedurally unfair’, and ‘tainted with apparent bias’. The authorities then charged him with a series of sex crimes, but a jury cleared him on all counts. Salmond claimed to be the victim of a conspiracy orchestrated by some of the most powerful people in Scottish politics. Going back was no longer an option.
Salmond’s answer was Alba, a party committed to independence but impatient with the SNP’s gradualism, and one vocal in opposition to his old party’s embrace of gender identity ideology. On paper, everything was in alignment: a major political figure, a resolutely pro-independence party, and a platform of resisting gender self-identification. Half the country backs independence and the vast majority are not on board with pretending blokes are women. So why did Alba fail?
There is the obvious explanation: the man died. When Salmond went, so did Alba’s soul. Another is the difficulty of breaking the electoral mould. For all the talk of Holyrood’s proportional voting system, the major parties (the SNP, Tories, Labour) have continued to exercise a hold over the parliament. Then there are the financial demands of running a party, the organisational challenges, and the headaches of factionalism and internal disputes over personalities and policies. Some independence supporters refused to vote for a party with a ‘socially conservative’ (i.e. gender critical) stance on trans matters; some gender-critical voters couldn’t bring themselves to treat with separatists.
But was there something else going on, something too revealing to be acknowledged by Alba’s target voters? Alba, you see, wasn’t just pro-independence. It was really pro-independence. Its policy statement on the matter isn’t backwards about coming forwards: it is titled ‘We Don’t Need Westminster’s Permission’. Alba asserted that a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament – something that has been in existence continuously since 2011 – formed ‘the basis to commence negotiations to establish an independent Scottish state’.
The party urged voters to confirm their backing for a breakaway at the 2026 Holyrood elections. ‘[A]n election,’ it assured supporters, ‘can be used as a means for restoring independence as courts do not and can not block elections or thwart manifesto commitments that the people of Scotland can mandate.’ It all sounds a bit Lionel Hutz, attorney at law, but it had the advantage of candour. If only Westminster could grant another referendum, and Westminster kept saying No, the independence movement was going to have to call Westminster’s bluff.
It was a risky approach. If (when) Westminster said No, Alba would have to choose whether and how to stand their ground, at which point the UK would have been thrown into a constitutional crisis of a kind unseen since the battle over Irish Home Rule. Which, however much a person supports independence, is a scary prospect. The SNP has spent years de-fanging independence, framing it as ‘normal’, non-threatening, just a wee tidy-up of constitutional arrangements. After two decades of the SNP in power at Holyrood, and 12 years on from the 2014 referendum, support for independence is the settled view of the Scottish government.
Perhaps a little too settled. Because while the SNP talks about independence, campaigns on it, and pumps out (civil servant-authored) propaganda in favour of it, it has no plan for delivering it. That should hurt the party electorally but the fact it doesn’t confirms that the SNP is truly a big-tent party: it’s for those who want independence but it’s also for those who don’t. You can vote for them safe in the knowledge that while they believe in independence, they don’t believe in doing anything about it.
How many independence voters feel the same? Yes, the polls show support at around 50 per cent, sometimes less, sometimes more, but given a choice between a party which has essentially thrown its hands up in despair and a party which threatens to take risks on the off-chance that it moves the dial forward, these voters are more comfortable with the former. Inertia or action? Independence voters seemingly say the former, which prompts an obvious question: can an independence voter who prefers change in theory but the status quo in practice really be called an independence voter?
Yes, there are tactics, and strategies, and long games, and credibility, and some – many – voters might feel the SNP is more serious and therefore the safer choice. Independence will come eventually. The challenge Alba posed to the SNP was: why not now? Maybe the answer is that nominally pro-independence voters have become devolutionists without realising it.
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